I can still vividly remember the first time I was caught searching for porn online. I’d hidden away in my dad’s office, sat on his enormous leather chair, disconnected the phone line (yes, I’m old- remember cassette tapes?) and waited patiently for the beeps and squeaks to tell me that the internet had booted up.

Now, I hadn’t gone online with the intention of searching for porn, but somehow or other, a pop-up had appeared featuring nude women, enticing the viewer to click and see further. I was about 8 or 9 when this happened and was hugely innocent to all things sex. A few weeks earlier, I’d quizzed my older brother on the correct terminology for a ‘boner,’ but my curiosity urged me forward in my journey to finding out about the graphic world of pornography.

Before I knew it, I was flooded with words and images I’d never heard of before, a level of explicitness that I’d never encountered before I’d made my way far deeper than ever intended. Frankly, it was overwhelming, which might explain why I accidentally left one of the most graphic pages open as I darted out of the room upon hearing footsteps.

My father was extremely chilled out about the incident; he approached me calmly and asked If I’d been searching for what I had. He wasn’t there to scold me or tell me I’d done wrong. To be honest, I think he wanted to sit me down and give me the ‘birds and the bees’ talk before I started to develop an extremely distorted understanding of sex and relationships. Being primarily straight, I was being exposed to a lot of sexist and violent misogynistic imagery.

Sorry, Dad.

The following weeks and months were a whirlwind of images, videos, erotic fiction, and more. My little brain was giddy with how much porn I could find and how easily I could access it online. The thing is, I look back at the amount of porn I was consuming at the time, and I am filled with an overwhelming relief. Relief that I’ve grown up, matured, and can look at it with a much broader understanding of the porn industry, which includes feminism and sex work, that obviously I couldn’t have comprehended back then.

I’m just so thankful it didn’t have a greater effect on me. I still watch porn occasionally. In fact, my girlfriend and I often watch it together. I find it fun and exciting to watch but not nearly as much as I did when I was younger. My early access to it meant I became a little bit obsessed and consumed a hell of a lot of information in a very short space of time. It was new, it was visceral, and I loved it.

I realize now that I had begun to get a little obsessed, and my relationship with it had become quite dangerous. I would look for it anywhere and any way I could. My friends and I would swap videos and images frequently, but, fortunately, I can now separate myself from these incidents and see it as a formative and maturing experience. I strongly believe that porn should be much more openly acknowledged and discussed, especially between parents and children. We live in an age where porn is incredibly easy to access. 

Frankly, it would be much healthier to consume pornography knowing that it is not a taboo act that should be kept secret. Be open, be honest, and try to develop a healthy relationship with what you watch and engage with.

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